Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

Project Sentinel — A Bipedal Walking Robot

July 6, 2014 by 30 Comments

Bipedal-Walking-Sentinel-Project-500x375

[Ye Guan] has always been fascinated by walking robots — so he decided to build his own. It’s called Project Sentinel, and he’s loosely based the design off of the Sentinel Walker from Warhammer 40K, and the two-legged AT-AT walker from Star Wars.

Both of these robots are based off of a bird’s walking style. Scientifically this is called the digitgrade walking style, which means they stand and walk on their digits (toes) — this typically allows them to move more quickly and quietly than most other animals.

[Ye] has managed to achieve this for his project using 8 servo motors, balancing the center of mass directly above the feet. Think about it like a reverse pendulum, which is supported by the servos torque and balanced by a gyroscope. He plans to have it fully autonomous with sensor feedback.

It’s not done yet, but he’s already released all the CAD files and a nice build log for anyone to attempt it themselves — we’re excited to see the final product. Just take a look at it walking in place after the break!

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Gatling Gun Styled Water Pistol Made Out Of… Sugru?

July 5, 2014 by 31 Comments

sugru water pistol

We admit it – we’re suckers for clever advertising of a product. The company behind Sugru, everyone’s favorite self-setting-rubber-fix-it material commissioned this awesome gatling gun styled water pistol, and it’s actually quite impressive.

Designed by [Alex Bygrave], he was instructed to build the gun out of as many standard hardware store parts as possible — and as much Sugru as he could. It’s been used to make all the seals, connections, and even the pistons, and while we can’t tell if it leaks anywhere, it’s still pretty impressive.

Unlike a normal water pistol, this one is powered by compressed CO2 canisters like the ones used for welding — meaning the pressures are much higher than a typical super soaker as well!

19Stick around after the break to see it in action – tested on the staff of Sugru themselves!

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Electric Solder Paste Dispenser Speeds Up Reflow Prep

July 5, 2014 by 34 Comments

solder paste dispenser

[Geir Andersen] of Let’s Make Robots has been venturing deeper and deeper into the wonderful world of surface mounted devices, which as you know, can be tricky to solder! Not wanting to shell out a few hundred for a professional solder paste dispenser (and air compressor), [Geir] decided to build his own.

It allows him to use a standard syringe for solder paste, which can easily be refilled using this technique. The professional dispensers use air pressure to control the flow of the paste, but [Geir] decided to go the all-electric route instead. He’s hooked up a small stepper motor to a threaded shaft which can push the plunger up and down the syringe.

Couple that with a few 3D printed parts for the housing, a nicely designed PCB, and bam you have yourself a super handy solder paste dispenser! He’s even included a small potentiometer on the board to change the speed of the motor.  It might not be quite as accurate as a professional one, but as you can see in the video after the break it seems to work great for [Geir’s] purposes.

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Skateboard Sound Effects

Smart Skateboard Box Adds Sound Effects To Your Tricks

July 4, 2014 by 2 Comments

Here’s a rather interesting project aimed at making music — using skateboards. It’s called SkateHack, and it’s an open source project that mixes customized hardware, electronics and skating.

They’ve been at work on two different projects, both of which utilize piezoelectric sensors and contact microphones. The first, built in Sweden back in July 2012, is called the Augmented Ramp, which transforms a skateboard half-pipe into a musical instrument. The piezoelectric sensors and contact microphones convert vibrations from the ramp intro digital triggers which are then processed by software to create music. The result is a unique medley which changes with every trick.

The second project is called the Bauxite, which is made much the same, but designed to be easily built by anyone. It’s a skateboard trick box which also transforms grinding and tricks into cool sound effects and music. They call it a skateboard-powered-music-sampler — which in all reality, it is.

For more info check out the videos after the break.

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Angry Birds Sentry Gun Has Pigs Flying

July 4, 2014 by 4 Comments

[Farlei Heinen] has a C programming class at school. Not wanting to do another boring cookie-cutter project out of the textbook, he decided to do something different — he’s built an Arduino controlled sentry gun!

It consists of two parts: The sentry gun itself and a sonar detection tower which can tell if you’ve successfully knocked down the pigs or not. He’s using an Arduino Mega at the heart of the project, which controls the servos and reads information off of the sonar sensors.

The sentry gun uses two servo motors to control up and down, and left and right. The loading mechanism is manual, using elastic bands to launch the projectile. The firing mechanism however is a micro (9g) servo, which can release the elastic and shoot the projectile. The target is an Angry Birds toy play set made for kids.

It’s a pretty cool project, and [Farlei] has even released the source code for it if you’re interested in building your own — check it out in action, after the break!

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Third Person Perspective Is Guaranteed To Mess With Your Senses

July 2, 2014 by 29 Comments

3rd person oculus rift

Third person video games are never really that realistic — you get a much wider range of vision, you can typically see around things your character can’t actually see… the list goes on. But what would it be like to have a third person perspective, in real life?

That’s exactly what some hackers in Poland decided to do! This is their Real World Third Person Perspective VR / AR Experiment. It makes use of an Oculus Rift, two GoPros, a microprocessor and a few servo motors. It’s essentially a glorified camera on a stick that you wear as a backpack, but nonetheless it has a really cool effect.

The project was built in under 2 days to get into the tight deadline for Intel’s Wearable contest, which has an impressive prize list, including a grand prize of $500,000 for business development! They didn’t place, but it’s still a Hack a Day worthy project!

Check it out!

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IcenBerg. The Ice Cream Machine That Knocks

July 1, 2014 by 17 Comments

An Icecream Machine

It’s summer. It’s hot. After [Alex Shure] tried his hand at making his own ice cream, he knew he had to take it a step farther. Introducing icenBerg. He’s not just in the ice cream business. He’s building an empire.

Using various odds and ends from the workshop, an old mini fridge donated to him by friends, and a lathe, [Alex] built the first iteration of icenBerg. It features a fancy machined paddle inside the insulated housing, which can be driven by a power drill — or at least that was the plan…

The salvaged compressor system from the mini fridge provides the cooling for the machine. In his first attempt, he found a power drill wasn’t quite strong enough — so he ended up chucking the entire thing into his lathe for unbeatable ice cream mixing. The flavor of choice was apple banana coconut sorbet with chocolate oak cookie chunks and roasted soybeans (say that 10 times fast!).

The machine is far from complete, but as a proof of concept deliciousness it has spurred him to make it even better. He plans on making it a standalone unit using a windshield wiper motor, a PWM circuit with a microcontroller, and even hopes to correlate motor current to ice cream consistency.

Tread lightly.